They’ll probably try to pass it off as differentiation, but
the figures are telling. Android 2.3, aka
Gingerbread,still holds the lion’s
share,running on60.6% of total Android-running devices.

Quite a lot further down the line, we have Ice Cream
Sandwichwith15.9%. Although technically
gaining some ground– this figure rising5%in the past month–it’s nowhere near the level Google envisaged almost a year on
from releasing the version.

It had high hopes, but seemingly not enough manufacturers are
placing their faith in version. So does the blame lie ?
Google,for making it hard for mobile
makers to upgrade to the latest flashy version, consequently
delaying upgrades for customers? Or withhandset
manufacturersfor just not showing enough interest?
When you know there’s an update just round the corner, why bother
with the effort?

Jelly Bean, unveiled at the recent Google I/O developer
conference,has amassed just 0.8% so
far,though to be fairit’s only
available to run on a few select smartphoneslike the
Galaxy Nexus and tablet like Nexus
7. Whileonly a minor update from
ICS, this is much more encouraging to see after a short amount of
time. Again, this raises the question, why both with ICS when Jelly
Bean is here?

Contrast this with the walled garden world of Apple, where
they recently revealed attheir Worldwide Developers
Conference in June that 80% of their devices ran the latest iOS 5,
andthe disadvantages of Google’s open policy become
clear.

Android is in a rut – at least in attaining the numbers they
want from Ice Cream Sandwich. New features are being developed, but
not seen. Malware is becoming ever more rampant, despitebest efforts. They clearly need to exert some
pressure on mobile manufacturers to updatearchaic
Android versions present on their phones, if developing for Android
is going to continue to be lucrative.

On a positive sidenote for Ice Cream Sandwich –theRazrdroid project, part of the Raspberry Pi
foundation,have got the credit card
sized computer to run Android 4.0, bar some sound barriers. We’ll
be interested to see what this leads to. Although no code is
available just yet, check out the soundless video below to see it
in action.